I have known Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela for many years and followed her illustrious career with great interest and admiration. I was delighted when she joined Stellenbosch University in 2016. When I returned to the department of Psychology in 2022, my collaboration with Avreq was both personal and departmental. I collaborated more closely with Avreq, by being invited to do workshops for their postgraduate students and attending numerous seminars. As chair of the Psychology department, I encourage our students to consider completing postgraduate degrees at Avreq. I also support interested staff to collaborate on joint supervision of Masters and doctoral students with Avreq staff.

The MPhil in Violent Histories and Repair promises to be a stellar addition to the Avreq stable. Over the last decade there has been burgeoning decolonial literature in Psychology and beyond. The MPhil is the first programme at Stellenbosch University that formalises interdisciplinary teaching and research in a coursework Masters degree that draws extensively on decolonial scholarship. This approach is likely to deepen understandings of violent histories, contemporary manifestations of colonial violence but also refusals and pathways to decolonial futures, which include repair, as opposed to normative understandings of “coping”, prominent in the social sciences.

The impact of research and teaching in this programme can have considerable national and global impact at theoretical, methodological and applied levels. It cements transnational collaboration that eminates from the Global South and is likely to support epistemic justice by scholarly retrieval and recentering of archives erased from contemporary knowledge ecologies.

I look forward to the launch and growth of this programme with great anticipation.